Don't forget to be awesome...

Holidays!!! My only time when I can sit behind my desk, draw without having to check the time, worry about marking or preparing lesson.  It is MY time.  So during this holiday I did some drawings - not as much as I like to - keeping to my journal stuff because it is small and I can complete it relatively quickly.  But I feel the itch of a canvas or two coming on.  But alas, the holiday is over..... So here are the fruits of my labour:

"Nature"

"Hello there"

"Cosmic Nature"

"Peace"

"Joker"

Flower girl"

"Leap of Faith"

"Two friends"

Different angle "Nature"

Have a lovely day!

Art eventually again.....

Re-thinking my philosophy on the itchy feet syndrome D4-7 and birthdays

I can remember sitting right here in front of my computer in January contemplating our son's Gian departure to Europe(with trepidation and same time immense pride for taking this bold step). Since then he has traveled to Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the UK. Got himself a plum job, accommodation, new friends - and this week he is embarking on yet a new adventure: walking the El Camino de Compostella (The Way of St James) a 600 km trek from France to "the end of the world" in Santiago, Spain. I am secretly very envious.... wish I can walk that road. God (and St James) speed your travels, my son.

 

And we are getting ready to let the next fledgling spread his wings.
Thymon is embarking on a exchange year at the University of Sussex in Brighton at the end of the year. I always wanted our children to travel. As we dragged them across the world to live in three different counties while growing up, it is probably expected that they also have inherited the itching feet syndrome that the mother suffers from greatly. That is why we are going on a walkabout ourselves - myself and the less itchy feet hubby Giart. Long services leave.. those elusive words every person with his nose close to the grindstone dream about. We are going to walkabout in Africa, UK and Europe for 3 long months. Can I heard my feet sing? YES! and the best is that we will embark on this walkabout with our sons. Bring on October!

On the topic of feet... Again for the third year in a row we walk the Oxfam 100 km trial walker. A not too bad 28 hours later and sure that we have made a difference in the lives of people who are less fortunate than us, all four of us finished. I reckon it is also an excuse to quiet the those itching feet. Our team, The Styx (Thymon, Brodie, Aaron and myself) with a extremely well organised and supportive back up team, (Tricia, Nat, Kay, Brad, Jan, Sally and Judy)  have now walked 1200 km collectively and raised over $6000 for charity. I guess it is one way of keeping those itchy feet happy.

 Team Styx 2013 - 20 hours into the walk

Team Styx 2012

So I guess walking is fused into our genes - this urge in humans to find out what is over the next hill.  Research show us that only a few of our species left their ancestral home in the African savannahs and began that long walk to the ends of the earth which allowed homo sapiens to colonize the world.  The rest stayed behind ... Apparently these wanderers had a particular genetic profile - a higher percentage of an exploratory and novelty-seeking gene than those remaining behind. It is called the D4-7 allele gene.  I think I have that gene.. maybe it looks something like this:

 D4-7 Allele

Well, to all the wanderers out there - the ones that look up with longing when they see a plane fly overhead, the compulsive Google Earth googlers, the ones with more travel books on their bookshelf than money in the bank - I salute you.  I know the feeling.

As the good man J R R Tolkien said:  "Not all those who wander are lost..." 

Birthdays....
I also had another birthday in between all these other things happening in my life.  These days a birthday is marked with less fervour counting the candles on the cake and more enthusiasm drinking champagne.  This year I celebrated my birthday in Toowoomba whilst playing hockey in the Queensland Master Hockey championships.  All I can say is that fun was had by all.  My team pulled out a birthday cake with sparklers  and champs.  
A real surprise was the beautiful mandala drawings I got from Brigid, Caitlan,Charlie and Annabelle -  daughters of dear friends Liz, Theresi and Lisa. I LOVE them - each one with a special birthday messages on the back. These drawings now have a special place in my art journal. Thank you young ladies!! I feel an art weekend coming on...

Science, faces and flowers....

30 April 2013

Happy Easter!  Two months since I posted on the blog - sigh!!  When I started blogging at Christmas 2012, I promised myself that I will blog regularly but once I went back to school at the end of January the rush of the daily grind got to me.  I kept on working on my art - this is why there is now going to be an overload on the blog ......
All of these drawings are in my A4 art journal.  It is filling up and hopefully I will have an inspirational art journal in December 2013.  With two weeks of holidays, I am sure that the pages will fill up untill I hit school again.....

Other things happened as well. Our eldest son went on his walkabout - Korea, Tapei, Hong Kong and is now enjoying the late flurry of snow in London where he will be for the next two years. 

Happy walkabout Gian. With much love.





Gian in Hong Kong 

I made this drawing for Gian and slipped it into his luggage before he left.

 

  Hopefully he will take heed of the message.........

  

 
 

This blog is dived into two sections......

 Part 1: Science inspired

 

  I made a decision to give each artwork a name.  This has led to interesting discussions and sometimes gave me real inspiration.  As I love ancient Greek mythology (so much) I dipped into original Greek names - so forgive me if you look at the names and go uh?  I had great fun.  Maybe look it up and have fun too!! But the biggest discovery was looking at cells under a microscope!!  Oh my, a whole new world opened right in front of my eyes.  I wish I had paid more attention in science class... The shapes and colour nature gave us sights to behold. I am totally hooked.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious -

 the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
―     Albert Einstein

 

Well I was inspired.......  

"Amoebozoa"

I imagined that this is how cells in our bodies move along when expressed in artform.....
 

 

 

"Flower chromosome"

 

 

"Nautilus with oompf"

 

 

"Nautilus Pompilius"

 







"Cephalopod"  

      Commonly known as an octopus.    

 

 PART 2

FLOWERS, FACES and HEARTS

 

I love to draw flowers and faces and tried to experiment with different pens and decided in the end that I like working with water colours the most. 

 

"Anemone"

 

  

"Spora"

 

The Greek word spora means sowing of seeds.

I love the black and white contrast. I would like to work with graphite and charcoal to create the contract. This was done using a sharpie and ink pen in this drawing.

 

"Cosmos"

 

 

 

 

"Cosmos explosion"

 

  

Then I went on to draw faces.  Love to draw the female with flowers in her hair.... (she has quite a strong jaw hence the reference to Medusa... ha ha)

"Medusa with flowers"

 

 

"Harpeia"

 

The winged diva.... Ancient Greek writers called them two "lovely-haired" creatures.
 
"Be the kind of woman
that when your feet
hit the floor each morning
the devil says:
"aw crap, she's up!"
 

 

 "Lamprocapnos spectabilis"

 

 The heart flower - it is a real flower and is in the shape of a heart.  I decided to called this drawing Lamprocapnos.

 

 

"And above all else
guard your heart
for everything you do
flows from it...."

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

January journal

My January journal had a makeover -  I was determined to use separated pieces of water colour paper to make up the journal. Alas I must confess that I realized that I had to bind it. (Looked into Coptic binding - amazing ) but decided I will try that at a later stage.
So I went to the shop and bought a journal.  Out the window went all the sentimental ideas of using my son's baby album cover as a part of the journal.
 I had to reinvent the wheel - none of the pages I made so far fitted the new journal. Had to cut and rethink the whole thing. Maybe the Coptic stitching was not such a far fetched idea...
Anyway, I finished the one part of the January entry - if you look at the page you will see that the dates only go halfway.  I intend to make another double spread to finish January off. Hopefully I can achieve this before the end if January......
My theme for the first part was RISK. I always wonder about the concept of risk taking and the philosophy underpinning this action. Most if us are happy to live our lives away from risk - content with the things that we know and the familiar tide of the everyday routine. Taking risks means one may fail. Having the courage to risk failure is what effects change.  But to step out of our comfort zone have benefits: It can boost your confidence  and develops character and courage, enhance creativity, and helps establish a sense of both limitations and possibilities.

“Risk-taking is inherently failure-prone. Otherwise, it would be called sure-thing-taking.”

— Tim McMahon

So 2013 is the year of taking risks.  No bungy jumping or risky behaviour but hopefully stepping out to embrace  my creativity and the angst that it can bring. 

But back to the journal. Here is the double page for half of January.... Hope you like it.  I looked into all the wise sayings about risk taking out there and added some quotes to the page to express my feelings about the concept of risk. 

Art Journal 2013

I have taken the BIG step. Art journal 2013 has seen the light. After contemplating making an Art journal for ages, I have decided this time it is going to happen. This decision plunged me immediately into a creative crisis. After looking at many art journals, I felt that my style was not really represented and I was not prepared to "copy" other artists. So what to do.... Or not to do....
I was amazed to see the beautiful work of other artists as I googled away. All these examples of fab artwork in the form of journals can only inspire me to produce something that was going to be me. I don't really like the scrapbooking style, as I want to draw images myself and not want to copy or print images.
I also discovered Pinterest - what an eye opener. If you are reading this and don't know anything about Pinterest, look it up right now and start following..... Really amazing that you can find similar pages all pinned together. So download it (it's free) and start pinning.

The last two weeks haves been unbearably hot and I have moved out of the house onto the veranda with all my art stuff. I can now take a dip in to pool ( which I do several time a day) and go straight back to doing art in dripping togs... And the dogs are happy because they can find the breezy spots while still being close to me.

So back to the journal - I have done the front page yesterday. I decided that I wanted to make a book or rather a collection of pages instead of using a normal art journal or exercise book. So I had to find a cover for the front and back ( I wanted something thicker than the pages - watercolour paper - that I was going to use for the journal). Over the weekend I was looking at the photo album of our eldest son, Gian, now 23 and realized that the cover of the album was in a rather poor condition ( remember it lasted 23 years). I took all the photographs out to put into a new album and threw out the old album.
As I was pondering the start of the journal on Monday, I suddenly remember the photo album  - at this stage is was in the trash..... I retrieved it, cut the spine off and had two perfect hard covers for the prospective art journal. I think it is rather fitting that I use his album as it will give the project sentimental value. So armed with glue paper and pencils, I made the front cover of the journal.
Here it is......

Front cover of the Art Journal

I have also decided to divided the journal into monthly pages. Double spread for each month, divided into days. Big plans!!

With my holiday soon to come to an end and the prospect of going back to work is pushing me along to get the project to a point where I can draw / comment / doodle on a regular basis, at least. Regular basis is the operative word here..... I would like to do something each day but I know that it would be impossible once I'm back at school. So instead of punishing myself, I hope to do a drawing once week, but to make at least a comment every day.

So that is it.... The challenge is set! 352 days to go.
Today I have made the inside page of the cover. I had really fun doing it and think that it represents me. I had an old art book on the shelf and I took the introduction page out and started working on it. I looked for possible words that I can use and blocked the rest out. This is the result.

First page

The next step will be dividing the pages into months and the months into days.....
And then I am set and ready to go. Keep watching this space.
Peace

Doodles G and T for my two sons

I have now completed the hand prints for my two sons and husband.  I had been fun doing it as I added more personal messages and symbols for each into each drawing.  I treasure the time (especially very early in the morning) when I can sit down and draw without any distraction.  Genie and Cassie (my two dogs) and the budgies(Lexie and Lana) are the ones that keeping my company while the rest of the family is still asleep.  The coolness of the early mornings are also good for the old head... Here are the results:

Thymon's hand

Gian's hand

Giart's hand

All three hands

I probably have to start on my hand as well to complete the set.

In between working on the hand print I have started a random doodle - When I get bored or cannot think of anything creative I usually leave whatever I am busy doing and start something new. I reckon this is the time when my brain goes into idle. Anyway this is it - I am far from finished - will keep it as the in between project.  Have a lovely day.

Hand and foot Doodles

New Year 2013 - Happy New Year to all.  This new day and year inspired my (after finishing Lady of the Garden yesterday) to revert to my favourite activity - doodling!!
I decided that instead of doodling any shape that comes to mind - I need to focus and maybe use shapes that I know. So what better than hands and feet!!  My husband volunteered to be the guinea pig and I promptly traced the outline of his hand on a piece of paper.  I decided to start with his name initial G and from there I doodled along and ended up with this.

I have cut it out as I want to make collage with his face in the background. So watch this space for the final product:)

As if this was not enough on new year's day - while I took many obligatory drips in the pool (it is very hot today) my hubby decided that I need to doodle his footprint as well.   So a quick paint on the bottom of his foot and a print on white paper, I had to think how I was going to do this one. We use grey paint to do the print - wrong choice in hind sight ..... I would use a lighter colour next time.

Anyhow - this is how it turned out.  I decide to use words to bring my meaning across and it is titled:  "Tread lightly on the Earth". Here is a picture - you can see the grey outline of his foot in the background.  I have cut it out and will use it in a collage with the hand.